✨ BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: UPDATED STORY IS HERE AND MOVING FAST - CHAPTER 4.2: ZEPH POV AND FLASHBACK ✨
Thank you so much for checking out Top The Tower! The story is continuing, with some slight modifications, under the new name: Top The Tower: Tarot, Travel, Paint and People [Slice-of-Life Adventure]. When I first started on Top The Tower, I was flying by the seat of my pants. Over the past month I've been outlining and delving deeper into the details of Ablee's world, and it's become apparent some modifications were needed to secure the longevity of the ongoing story. Most are minor changes, and the characters and setting details remain largely unchanged. The two big differences in the new version will be:
A switch to first person past tense point of view, which will serve to get us deeper into the heads of Ablee, Zeph, Rhody, and more.
A modification to Ablee's powers, the fantastic chalk village on her cell walls is now a painted village we'll be growing and taking with us on our journey.
If you liked the original, it would be a great honor if you'd join me as a reader under the new title! I’m taking everything I and others loved about the first version and cranking it up a notch: more humor, more heart, and a whole lot more adventure.
This is the story I’ve always wanted to tell, and these modifications will help me do it justice. Head over to Top The Tower: Tarot, Travel, Paint and People [Slice-of-Life Adventure], and experience the next chapter of this world.
My sincerest thanks to those who've followed the first version, and those that stick with it under the new title. Your support means so much!
image [https://www.royalroadcdn.com/public/covers-large/101795-top-the-tower-tarot-travel-paint-and-people.jpg?time=1735505067]
Top The Tower: Tarot, Travel, Paint and People [Slice-of-Life Adventure]
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Ablee Urough, the rebellious daughter of a tyrannical warlord, has spent five long years locked in a cell, surviving on scraps and bitter resolve. Her father force-fed her the Painter’s Ambrosia—the food of the gods—hoping to mold her into the ideal tool. Instead, she’s spent every waking moment practicing her powers toward one goal: escape.
With Ambrosia letting her transform her surroundings into paint, Ablee can turn walls into curtains and even her fists into stone. Her chance finally comes when she creates a living painting—a rippling veil that might just lead to freedom. Her goal? Escape the keep, gather a crew, and beat her father to the top of The Tower.
What to expect:
- Inventive, magical world-building
- A diverse, quirky crew of protagonists
- A determined MC who grows stronger every step of the way
- A pocket-dimension village that grows alongside the crew's travels
- Morally good but snarky vibes
- Poker with a priest for a magical artifact?
- A life of death Soap-box race?
- Musical flashbacks?
Revised Chapter 1 Sample:
"I sat against the wall of my cell with my knees to my chest. Cold air wrapped around my shivering form. "D-damnit..." I cursed myself.
My escape attempts had all failed. I'd lost my "privileges" to a cot, a coat, anything I could use to try and break out. Now, I had stone walls, shackles, and a barred window that welcomed the winter wind like an old friend.
"Gli-Glimin!" my teeth clattered as I shouted to my guard and caretaker, "I'm turning icy blue in here; better stop me, or I'll paint my shackles in that blue and shatter them!"
I looked down at my trembling hands and wished that was how my Ambrosia worked, but it wasn't. Glimmin was well aware I couldn't paint the cold iron of my shackles, that the liquid would bead and drip off them like water off oil. If it hadn't, I'd have coated them in paint pulled from my bread provisions and slipped out of them long ago.
The wind whistled through my window; the sight beyond it both excited and taunted me. The Tower, that titanic, white-stone monolith that rose into the clouds. It was wreathed in the electric blue light of the ley lines that snaked across its form. It was my father's greatest ambition. Topping The Tower.
I would beat him to it."